Acknowledgements

My thanks are due to Lt.-Col. (Retd.) C. D. Darroch, Honorary Archivist of the Royal Hampshire Regiment, Winchester; the Imperial War Museum; the Daily Mail; the Southampton Daily Echo; to Michael Mellor and Michael Schanze, both of Munich (although they are strangers to each other). Also to my cousin Major (Retd.) Alan Graham who, as a nineteen-year-old, parachuted into France on the night before D-Day. To Denis Donovan, former BBC television newsman, for his great assistance in research; to my friend Andrew Millington for sharing his knowledge of pre-war cars; and to Sheila Perrett of Lymington who not only word-processed the manuscript (many times!) but also added her own small but astute input to the story.

Thanks must also go to my publishers Andy McKillop of William Heinemann, and Susan Sandon of Arrow, who gave me great encouragement; and to Mary Chamberlain who, once again, edited my manuscript.

Finally, as always, thanks to my wife Diana who read the story as it grew and came up with her own advice, suggestions and judgement.

*

Waiting for the Day is fiction set against the background of real events. Some of these events have been taken slightly out of context in order to fit the story, and I have changed other aspects of the six months leading to D-Day on 6 June 1944 but not, I hope, to the extent of distorting what happened in those astonishing times.

Much has been written in the past sixty years on the unfolding of the invasion of Europe. I am indebted to the following sources:

Chester Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe (Collins, 1952)

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (William Heinemann, 1948)

Max Hastings, Overlord (Michael Joseph, 1984)

M. R. D. Foot, SOE in France (HM Stationery Office, 1966)

Norman Longmate, The G.I.s: The Americans in Britain 1942–45 (Hutchinson, 1975)

Neil Barber, The Day the Devils Dropped In (Leo Cooper, 2002)

Angus Calder, The People’s War 1939–45 (Cape, 1969)

John Strawson, Gentlemen in Khaki: The British Army 1890–1990 (Secker & Warburg, 1989)

Charles Cruikshank/Imperial War Museum, The German Occupation of the Channel Islands (Oxford University Press, 1975)

Philip Ziegler, London at War 1939–1945 (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995)

N. D. G. James, Plain Soldiering (The Hobnob Press, Salisbury, 1987)

George Forty, U.S. Army Handbook 1939–1945 (Ian Allan Ltd, 1979)

Robert Goralski, World War II Almanac 1931–1945 (Hamish Hamilton, 1981)

Stephen Badsey, D-Day (Tiger Books International, 1993)

Norman Longmate, How We Lived Then (Hutchinson, 1971)

Robert Gildea, Marianne in Chains: The German Occupation of France 1940–45 (Macmillan, 2002)

David Scott Daniell, The Royal Hampshire Regiment in World War II (Gale and Polden, 1955)

Henry Stanhope, The Soldiers: An Anatomy of the British Army (Hamish Hamilton, 1979)

David Chandler, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Army (Oxford University Press, 1994)

Leslie Thomas
Lymington, Hampshire
June 2003